creative briefing

When you see a .doc, you know exactly what kind of file it is, and you probably know what company is behind it. Why shouldn’t this form of brand recognition transcend into the online realm? Why should we be constrained to the .html’s and .php’s of today’s web world?

This third installment of How to brand your website’s URL continues to show you how you can and should be customizing even the slightest details of your website’s URL by using your own cutomized file extensions.

Why should I use a custom file extension?

Quite simply, it’s another easy way to mark what’s yours as yours. For the web designer who understands the value of leaving their signature in the footer of a site they’ve designed, the custom extension serves as yet another way to leave your call sign.

Got an acronym or short word associated with your brand (or one that you’d like to get associated with your brand)? Flaunt it! Want to promote the technology behind your site as being something new and unique? Do it! You’ll wow the common user and make other site publishers jealous.

So how do I do it?

Creating your own custom extension is actually a fairly easy process, though it’ll take a little bit of work with your server’s .htaccess file. If you don’t know what this is, don’t worry, I’ll walk you through it.

Say for example, we’d like to create a new page using the custom extension .cb (for creative briefing, naturally). Furthermore, this new page will contain PHP scripts, so we need to make sure the server parses it as if it were a .php file. No problem. First, we find our .htaccess file.

How do I find my .htaccess file?

First, check the route directory of your site for a file that is labelled as “.htaccess”. If you find one, download it, and open it up in your preferred text editor. If you don’t have one, create a new text file and rename it to “.htaccess”.

Done. Now what?

To add a custom file extension, it’s just a matter of telling the server what file type (or Mime Type, as we’ll learn later) is associated with your new extension. In this case, we’d like to tell the server to treat .cb as if it were a PHP (.php) file.

The general form of the syntax to get this done is as follows:

AddType <Mime Type> <Custom Extension 1> <Custom Extension 2> <Custom Extension 3>

The Mime Type is a specific name given to a type of file that is used to tell the browser how to handle your custom extension. In this case, the Mime Type for a PHP file is application/x-httpd-php.

So, with your .htaccess file opened, you’ll want to add the follow line:

AddType application/x-httpd-php cb

In fact, because you want to ensure that other files with the .php extension still work, you’ll probably want to add .php to the list too, like so:

AddType application/x-httpd-php cb php

Save. Upload. Dance in branded excitement.

What about other Mime Types?

You can repeat this process for just about any Mime Type and any custom extension you want to use. All you need to do is find the correct Mime Type and choose a suitable extension. For example, the Mime Type for HTML files is text/html.

Don’t get too carried away with it though, and be sure to do it only if it serves a real purpose (i.e. the branding of your URL). Remember that similar files were given specific file extensions in the past so that they’d be easier to organize and identify. So don’t go wild and start updating your image files and PowerPoint files with custom extensions unnecessarily.

But for those necessary occasions, I’ve created a list of 99 common Mime Types for you to use to your heart’s content.

Enjoy and happy branding!